batman begins
Yesterday i had the pleasure of seeing Batman Begins. Mr. Johnny K. and myself met up at the good ol’ treehouse in cockeysville to get some food and beer before we headed over to see the movie. John had seen the flick before, but liked it enough to agree to see it again since I had yet to see the film. Also, he was bored, I was bored, everybody else is off doing other stuff. Anyways. Beer was had, good chicken sandwiches consumed, and zing off to the movies. We did a bit of talking about biking and video games. Coincidentally we had some time before the film enough to head to dick’s sporting goods and look at some new bikes for John, since he’d been saying he definitely needs a new bike (his current one he’s had since he was about 12 i think, thats definitely reason for an upgrade).

Batman Begins, begins. It was pretty much everything and more i was hoping for the film. I really liked it. It got the batman movie franchise back into a darkly told story about a hero who really in his own right is pretty creepy and scary, and rightfully so. Batman, and Bruce Wayne needs to be portrayed in a dark and a little disturbed fashion. I mean there’s just not something right about a guy who runs around in a bat suit and fights crime. So when an actor is playing the alter-ego of that guy (i.e. Bruce Wayne) you have to get the feeling that he really isn’t quite all there himself. Christian Bale plays this role perfectly. He’s perfect for any role where you’re supposed to think he’s just not right in the head, no matter how handsome he’s made up to look.

With that said, Liam Nieson plays Raaz-Ah-Guul perfectly as well. I’ve only really known this character through the Batman: The animated Series, and the episodes with him have to be some of my favorite from the series. The story is a little different than what was written for the cartoon, which is understandable. The character himself is exactly what I was expecting, and well done.

My only commentary on the action for this movie was that I tend to dislike when action is portrayed with zoomed-in and jerky camera motions to portray more action than possibly was being shown by the actors in the film. I think its kind of cheap, and if they’d spent more time on some choreography, they wouldn’t need to resort to this sort of camera trick to give the illusion of more action going on than actually was filmed. I really only tend to notice this sort of thing when I see films in the theater though, so maybe its just disorienting to me when seen on the big screen. I’m sure if i see it again on DVD i won’t even make notice of actions scenes done this way. Even so, there were plenty of well done action scenes in the movie, that didn’t need the above mentioned film technique.

Loved the movie, i highly recommend it. The Scarecrow is a scary bastard….